Test System

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz (9.5x333MHz)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE X48T-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Memory: 2x 1GB DDR3-1600XMP OCZ (Supplied by OCZ)

Hard Disk: 2x 500GB HDD's (Western Digital and Seagate)

Graphics Card: MSI GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (Supplied by MSI)

Cooling: GIGABYTE 3D Galaxy II (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista SP1

Drivers: nForce Driver 15.17, Forceware 175.16

Our test bed has recently changed; we now use the X48T-DQ6 which has a second PCI Express x16 slot running off the Northbridge. This helps give PCI-E controller cards as much bandwidth as they can handle.

We have pit the Areca card against the Promise SuperTrack STEX8650 card, since both support SATA and have 256MB onboard cache. However, this won't make much difference as it only works in RAID 6 mode.

HD Tach

Version and / or Patch Used: 3.0.1.0

Developer Homepage: http://www.simplisoftware.com

Product Homepage: http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach